With a birthdate around 14.5 billion years ago and a margin for error of 0.8 billion years (depending on how youthful the star wishes to appear to others), HD 140283 has been given the slightly more memory-friendly name "the Methuselah star", a reference to the oldest person to ever live according to the Bible.

Previous estimates of the star's age had it celebrating it's super sweet sixteen billion but, as NASA points out, the fact that the Universe's age has been calculated at around 13.8 billion presented some obvious problems. The revised estimate and accompanying wiggle room allow for the Methuselah star, cosmology, and stellar physics to carry on coexisting comfortably.

Hubble was useful in achieving this by allowing the astronomers to more accurately measure the distance of the star from Earth using trigonometric parallax—a syllable-heavy way of describing how a star's position appears to change depending on the position of the observer. By comparing observations from opposite points in Hubble's orbit around Earth it was possible to work out a better approximation of the star's distance from us. The distance was then combined with information about the star's intrinsic brightness to estimate its age with around five times the precision.

"You get an age of 14.5 billion years, with a residual uncertainty that makes the star's age compatible with the age of the universe," said Howard Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "This is the best star in the sky to do precision age calculations by virtue of its closeness and brightness."

The star is moving at a speed of 800,000 miles per hour and, NASA explains, will eventually slingshot back to the galactic halo of stars encircling the Milky Way. Currently, however, space enthusiasts can see the star with the help of a pair of binoculars in the constellation of Libra.

Promoted Comments

What if it is 15.3 billion years old? I am not an astrophysicist, but what kind of ramifications are we talking if the star is indeed closer to the upper limit on the margin of error, and therefore older than the universe? Science marches on?

Anyway, this is really cool.

It would mean their dating methods are giving bad answers somehow. The limit of 13.8 billion years on the Universe is much more precise and irrefutable than any dating method.

From what I can gather, (from NASA's website) the dating method used to find the age of this star is very similar to that which was used to help find the age of universe. What would make this figure less reliable, just the precision?

Right off the bat, you can see from the error bars on this measurement that it's imprecise and we aren't entirely confident in it. In contrast, we know the Universe's age to the part per thousand level.

But more than that, the Universe's age is calculated using a large array of techniques, drawing on different branches of physics, all of which agree. You'd be asking me to throw out cosmology, nuclear physics, particle physics, and general relativity in favor of the error-prone astrophysical measurement of a single star's age. (When I say throw out, I mean there's no room for reconciliation. These branches have given definite answers that couldn't be fixed with small modifications, except maybe in the case of general relativity, so you'd have to start over mostly from scratch.) It would be entirely possible that this star is an odd duck that throws the technique off, and I would throw my lot in with that over the alternative.

Quote:

In which case, if the observations were made using something as precise as the WMAP, but specifically for this purpose, and the precision fell on the higher end of the margin of error, what would be the ramifications?

Completely serious question, and hey, I could have it completely wrong.

If the measurement were extremely precise but hugely inaccurate, it would indicate a systematic error. I would still throw it out until we started finding a lot of stars that seemed too old, and an array of cross checks based in a large number of branches of physics, as measurements for the age of the Universe are, had reached similar conclusions.

Edit: I want to assure you that I didn't downvote you. This is a completely reasonable question, and I only downvote trolls and proud ignorance.

70 Reader Comments

What if it is 15.3 billion years old? I am not an astrophysicist, but what kind of ramifications are we talking if the star is indeed closer to the upper limit on the margin of error, and therefore older than the universe? Science marches on?

What if it is 15.3 billion years old? I am not an astrophysicist, but what kind of ramifications are we talking if the star is indeed closer to the upper limit on the margin of error, and therefore older than the universe? Science marches on?

Anyway, this is really cool.

It would mean their dating methods are giving bad answers somehow. The limit of 13.8 billion years on the Universe is much more precise and irrefutable than any dating method.

Parallax is usually measured from Hubble at two times six months apart, when the binocular effect spans the full diameter of Earth's orbit around the sun, not just the much smaller distance between two sides of Hubble's orbit around the Earth.

So, wikipedia says this is a "sub giant" "metal poor" star - given its incredible age, I would've expected it to be a white dwarf by now (or ended its life in a super nova). Do stars of this type take an unusually long time to exit their main sequence? (Wikipedia says this star is 190.1 light years away, so I'm assuming our observations are pretty reflective of its current physical state).

So, wikipedia says this is a "sub giant" "metal poor" star - given its incredible age, I would've expected it to be a white dwarf by now (or ended its life in a super nova). Do stars of this type take an unusually long time to exit their main sequence? (Wikipedia says this star is 190.1 light years away, so I'm assuming our observations are pretty reflective of its current physical state).

Red dwarves have lifespans of many trillions of years and never become white dwarfs. They're simply not massive enough to burn fuel at a high rate or crush their cores into degenerate states as required for WD formation.

Imagine finding a planet in the habitable zone around an old stable star. What could evolution do with 13 billion years? OK, maybe around a slightly younger, but still old star so the planet would have some heavier elements to work with.

Of course, I wonder what evolution could do with only lighter elements to work with, or heavier elements being extremely rare...

What if it is 15.3 billion years old? I am not an astrophysicist, but what kind of ramifications are we talking if the star is indeed closer to the upper limit on the margin of error, and therefore older than the universe? Science marches on?

Anyway, this is really cool.

It would mean their dating methods are giving bad answers somehow. The limit of 13.8 billion years on the Universe is much more precise and irrefutable than any dating method.

You realize your statement (as worded) is a form of circular reasoning right? 13.8 billion years was derived using a dating method.

You realize your statement (as worded) is a form of circular reasoning right? 13.8 billion years was derived using a dating method.

I'm implying a dating method for stars.

From what I can gather, (from NASA's website) the dating method used to find the age of this star is very similar to that which was used to help find the age of universe. What would make this figure less reliable, just the precision?

In which case, if the observations were made using something as precise as the WMAP, but specifically for this purpose, and the precision fell on the higher end of the margin of error, what would be the ramifications?

Completely serious question, and hey, I could have it completely wrong.

The Universe doesn't have a center. This would also imply it has a perimeter or boundary to reference. The Universe is isotropic.

Yeah, the concept keeps alluding me, possibly due to misconceptions over the popularly used term "Big Bang". Had a teacher in school that tried explaining it as a 4D universe, or some such. Brought in a stretchy beach ball in the motif of the Earth as an example. She said as she was inflating it that it represented the universe in that all things were expanding relatively equally.She'd then asked if any if anyone could tell her which city was the center... after some minor quibbling about which city we thought was the center (some of course thought the city at the center should be the city we lived in, some elected either of the two poles, and some wanted a city at the equator). She pointed out then that there was no center, as it's impossible to define a center, as all the cities are the center of the universe, relative to their own position.

Still, the problem I had with that (still kinda do, I guess) is that I could still see that no matter if the beach ball was only 3 inches in diameter, and everything was close together, 6 inches in diameter, or 12 inches in diameter and everything far apart, there was still a center to the beach ball itself.In retrospect, I think I should have raised my hand for clarification, as to why the center of the beach ball would not be equivalent to the center of the universe.Thinking outside of 3D terms is a great way to induce a headache though, and at that point I just wanted the bell to ring. :-/

The Universe doesn't have a center. This would also imply it has a perimeter or boundary to reference. The Universe is isotropic.

Yeah, the concept keeps alluding me, possibly due to misconceptions over the popularly used term "Big Bang". Had a teacher in school that tried explaining it as a 4D universe, or some such. Brought in a stretchy beach ball in the motif of the Earth as an example. She said as she was inflating it that it represented the universe in that all things were expanding relatively equally.She'd then asked if any if anyone could tell her which city was the center... after some minor quibbling about which city we thought was the center (some of course thought the city at the center should be the city we lived in, some elected either of the two poles, and some wanted a city at the equator). She pointed out then that there was no center, as it's impossible to define a center, as all the cities are the center of the universe, relative to their own position.

Still, the problem I had with that (still kinda do, I guess) is that I could still see that no matter if the beach ball was only 3 inches in diameter, and everything was close together, 6 inches in diameter, or 12 inches in diameter and everything far apart, there was still a center to the beach ball itself.In retrospect, I think I should have raised my hand for clarification, as to why the center of the beach ball would not be equivalent to the center of the universe.Thinking outside of 3D terms is a great way to induce a headache though, and at that point I just wanted the bell to ring. :-/

The 'inside' of the beach-ball is not part of the consideration. In this case, only the 2-dimensional surface is what counts. It is an imperfect analogy as the universe has 11? dimensions. The question of whether it exists in some entity of even more dimensions (the way the 2 dimensional beach-ball surface exists in the 3 dimensional world of our perception) is up to metaphysics.

From what I can gather, (from NASA's website) the dating method used to find the age of this star is very similar to that which was used to help find the age of universe. What would make this figure less reliable, just the precision?

Right off the bat, you can see from the error bars on this measurement that it's imprecise and we aren't entirely confident in it. In contrast, we know the Universe's age to the part per thousand level.

But more than that, the Universe's age is calculated using a large array of techniques, drawing on different branches of physics, all of which agree. You'd be asking me to throw out cosmology, nuclear physics, particle physics, and general relativity in favor of the error-prone astrophysical measurement of a single star's age. (When I say throw out, I mean there's no room for reconciliation. These branches have given definite answers that couldn't be fixed with small modifications, except maybe in the case of general relativity, so you'd have to start over mostly from scratch.) It would be entirely possible that this star is an odd duck that throws the technique off, and I would throw my lot in with that over the alternative.

Quote:

In which case, if the observations were made using something as precise as the WMAP, but specifically for this purpose, and the precision fell on the higher end of the margin of error, what would be the ramifications?

Completely serious question, and hey, I could have it completely wrong.

If the measurement were extremely precise but hugely inaccurate, it would indicate a systematic error. I would still throw it out until we started finding a lot of stars that seemed too old, and an array of cross checks based in a large number of branches of physics, as measurements for the age of the Universe are, had reached similar conclusions.

Edit: I want to assure you that I didn't downvote you. This is a completely reasonable question, and I only downvote trolls and proud ignorance.

The Universe doesn't have a center. This would also imply it has a perimeter or boundary to reference. The Universe is isotropic.

Yeah, the concept keeps alluding me, possibly due to misconceptions over the popularly used term "Big Bang". Had a teacher in school that tried explaining it as a 4D universe, or some such. Brought in a stretchy beach ball in the motif of the Earth as an example. She said as she was inflating it that it represented the universe in that all things were expanding relatively equally.She'd then asked if any if anyone could tell her which city was the center... after some minor quibbling about which city we thought was the center (some of course thought the city at the center should be the city we lived in, some elected either of the two poles, and some wanted a city at the equator). She pointed out then that there was no center, as it's impossible to define a center, as all the cities are the center of the universe, relative to their own position.

Still, the problem I had with that (still kinda do, I guess) is that I could still see that no matter if the beach ball was only 3 inches in diameter, and everything was close together, 6 inches in diameter, or 12 inches in diameter and everything far apart, there was still a center to the beach ball itself.In retrospect, I think I should have raised my hand for clarification, as to why the center of the beach ball would not be equivalent to the center of the universe.Thinking outside of 3D terms is a great way to induce a headache though, and at that point I just wanted the bell to ring. :-/

The 'inside' of the beach-ball is not part of the consideration. In this case, only the 2-dimensional surface is what counts. It is an imperfect analogy as the universe has 11? dimensions. The question of whether it exists in some entity of even more dimensions (the way the 2 dimensional beach-ball surface exists in the 3 dimensional world of our perception) is up to metaphysics.

How does the 300 million years of darkness play into this? 13.8 billion - 300 million = 13.5 billion. If you add the margin of error you only get 14.3 billion. Did stars form while the universe was still dark, or what am I missing?

Just out of curiosity, but don't stars form metal naturally through fusion? I thought that is why they eventually died: they create iron which ends the fusion process and results in a supernova which creates the elements heavier than iron.

So is this star somehow creating an equilibrium in its fusion cycle that stops it from creating iron? I'm confused.

From what I can gather, (from NASA's website) the dating method used to find the age of this star is very similar to that which was used to help find the age of universe.

That would imply that NASA's web site is extremely badly phrased. The dating method for stars involves carefully measuring chemical abundances by spectroscopy, and is very sensitively dependent on the absolute brightness of the star, to know which we need to know the distance, which was just measured using Hubble's fine-guidance sensors.

You can also do direct radio-isotope dating of stars, though it's a fiddly spectroscopic process because uranium and thorium are both rare and have very complicated spectrums; Cayrel produced a 2001 paper 'Measurement of stellar age from uranium decay'.

The method to find the age of the universe involves measuring two-point spatial correlations in the cosmic microwave background to determine the red-shift of the time when the universe became transparent; particle-physics arguments say that it took 372,000 years to become transparent, and multiplying by the red-shift gives the age of the universe.

The Universe doesn't have a center. This would also imply it has a perimeter or boundary to reference. The Universe is isotropic.

Yeah, the concept keeps alluding me, possibly due to misconceptions over the popularly used term "Big Bang". Had a teacher in school that tried explaining it as a 4D universe, or some such. Brought in a stretchy beach ball in the motif of the Earth as an example. She said as she was inflating it that it represented the universe in that all things were expanding relatively equally.She'd then asked if any if anyone could tell her which city was the center... after some minor quibbling about which city we thought was the center (some of course thought the city at the center should be the city we lived in, some elected either of the two poles, and some wanted a city at the equator). She pointed out then that there was no center, as it's impossible to define a center, as all the cities are the center of the universe, relative to their own position.

Still, the problem I had with that (still kinda do, I guess) is that I could still see that no matter if the beach ball was only 3 inches in diameter, and everything was close together, 6 inches in diameter, or 12 inches in diameter and everything far apart, there was still a center to the beach ball itself.In retrospect, I think I should have raised my hand for clarification, as to why the center of the beach ball would not be equivalent to the center of the universe.Thinking outside of 3D terms is a great way to induce a headache though, and at that point I just wanted the bell to ring. :-/

Another way to look at it is that, in such a 2 dimensional universe, ANY point (city on that Earth balloon) appears to be the center of the universe to any observer at that point. So, in effect, the students who suggested the city they were in at the moment were kind of right, although only in appearance from their perspective.

In other words, from their perspective, the universe stretches out an equal distance in all directions from that point. Which kind of defines it as the center. The problem is the same can be said of any point on that surface.

Now, if you can describe that mathematically, then add one more dimension...

Nope - you've got the formula for distance modulus wrong, dropping the all important "-5" at the end. m-M = 5 log D - 5. (Where this comes from is, absolute magnitudes are referenced to a distance of 10 pc, not 1 pc, so there's an offset. See the derivation here. So in fact the star has an absolute V magnitude around 3.4 instead of -1.6.

Surprisingly that still puts this star as more luminous than the sun. Consistent with that it's an F spectral type with an effective temperature similar to the sun. That's not what I would have guessed for a star of this age! Huh, cool, turns out this isn't an M dwarf with a lifetime a trillion years long, it's a star with a mass not that dissimilar from the sun which has started to move off the main sequence due to age. Give it another few 10s of Myrs and it's going to be a red giant, and a few 100 Myr beyond that and it'll be gone. So, it's lasted since almost the beginning but for this particular star the end is in sight... eventually. :-)

Just out of curiosity, but don't stars form metal naturally through fusion? I thought that is why they eventually died: they create iron which ends the fusion process and results in a supernova which creates the elements heavier than iron.

So is this star somehow creating an equilibrium in its fusion cycle that stops it from creating iron? I'm confused.

Through fusion stars do create "metals" (which in astronomer jargon is anything other than H and He; in fact only stars more massive than 8 Msun make it all the way to iron, which this one isn't. It's not going to make it past producing C, N, and O. ) However, those materials remain down in the star's core and don't get transported up into the surface layers for stars like this one (M dwarfs are fully convective but that's not relevant here). So when you look at the spectra from the star's atmosphere you're getting a fairly pristine measurement of the material from which that star formed.

It's only once stars die and dissipate through mass loss or supernova that (some of) the inner material gets mixed out into the rest of the universe. It's hard to get stuff out of the core of a star. :-)

The Universe doesn't have a center. This would also imply it has a perimeter or boundary to reference. The Universe is isotropic.

Just because the universe is expanding, and infinite and so on, doesn't mean that there isn't a center. it may be impossible to see, but there was and is a center. the entire thing missing in this universal center argument, is it doesn't matter if there is an object in the center, it doesn't matter that every object in the universe can be considered in the "center" when viewed from a certain angle, the center of the universe is right in the middle... basically, imagine a sphere any diameter you want, and have it covered equally on all sides by the universe. boom, you've found the center.

Just out of curiosity, but don't stars form metal naturally through fusion? I thought that is why they eventually died: they create iron which ends the fusion process and results in a supernova which creates the elements heavier than iron. So is this star somehow creating an equilibrium in its fusion cycle that stops it from creating iron? I'm confused.

Oh Wired, please stop reporting on science. You never get it right. No star is 14.5 billion years old and the Universe itself is not that old. Like you so clumsily quote, this is "compatible with" our current knowledge of the Universe's age.

Moving on...

Quote:

Just because the universe is expanding, and infinite and so on, doesn't mean that there isn't a center. it may be impossible to see, but there was and is a center

Everywhere is a center. You see, the Universe does not have meaningful edges (how do you put a boundary on space itself? What's outside the boundary? How can there be an outside if there's no space for it to be in?), and the edges it does have are your own, so you are the center. Each observer is the center of his own observable Universe.

You're thinking of spheres, aren't you? A sphere is a region of space (How can space be a region of space?). The Universe does not need to be shaped as a sphere. It could be flat. It could be hyperbolic. It could even be closed. Hell, it could be a torus.

Oh Wired, please stop reporting on science. You never get it right. No star is 14.5 billion years old and the Universe itself is not that old. Like you so clumsily quote, this is "compatible with" our current knowledge of the Universe's age.

Moving on...

Quote:

Just because the universe is expanding, and infinite and so on, doesn't mean that there isn't a center. it may be impossible to see, but there was and is a center

Everywhere is a center. You see, the Universe does not have meaningful edges (how do you put a boundary on space itself? What's outside the boundary? How can there be an outside if there's no space for it to be in?), and the edges it does have are your own, so you are the center. Each observer is the center of his own observable Universe.

You're thinking of spheres, aren't you? A sphere is a region of space (How can space be a region of space?). The Universe does not need to be shaped as a sphere. It could be flat. It could be hyperbolic. It could even be closed. Hell, it could be a torus.

Sure, it theoretically could, but given that the universe is expanding at the same rate everywhere, it's shape is in the sphere family, sure it make be a little elongated at the top and bottom, or a little fat in the middle, but it's still spherical.

Everywhere is a center. You see, the Universe does not have meaningful edges (how do you put a boundary on space itself? What's outside the boundary? How can there be an outside if there's no space for it to be in?), and the edges it does have are your own, so you are the center. Each observer is the center of his own observable Universe.

Whether there is anything outside our universe or before it isn't a question that can currently be answered one way or the other. Just because the 'outside' wouldn't be part of our spacetime doesn't mean it can't exist.

Sure, it theoretically could, but given that the universe is expanding at the same rate everywhere, it's shape is in the sphere family, sure it make be a little elongated at the top and bottom, or a little fat in the middle, but it's still spherical.

Also, the rate is not the same everywhere. It's accelerating. A hyperbolic surface is most compatible with this, a spherical surface means you can go in one direction and end up where you started - a closed Universe, which has been discredited.

Using the laws inside space to say how space itself is shaped is at best misguided. It's like saying that as one can only run at 15 mph, all vehicles must also go at 15 mph.

In this case, I would be more likely to doubt the stellar evolution models that are used to date this star. The age of the universe is pretty well constrained through various independent measurements. Getting precise stellar ages, on the other hand, certainly has its issues and complications.

Also, keep in mind that Astronomers generally report the 1-sigma uncertainties, so the +/-0.8 billion years would only encompasses the 68th percentile of the uncrainty range. The three-sigma range would then be about +/-2.4 billions years.

Sure, it theoretically could, but given that the universe is expanding at the same rate everywhere, it's shape is in the sphere family, sure it make be a little elongated at the top and bottom, or a little fat in the middle, but it's still spherical.

Also, the rate is not the same everywhere. It's accelerating. A hyperbolic surface is most compatible with this, a spherical surface means you can go in one direction and end up where you started - a closed Universe, which has been discredited.

Using the laws inside space to say how space itself is shaped is at best misguided. It's like saying that as one can only run at 15 mph, all vehicles must also go at 15 mph.

You know that the rate of change can be the same everywhere right? why do you think I talked about an elliptical shaped universe?

Queue the nutters, who claim that this can't possibly be true, since, as Bishop Usher in England decisively proved a few centuries ago, the world was created around 4400 BC, based on totaling the longevity of various characters who appeared in the Old Testament.

One thing I am a bit skeptical of is that this article doesn't seem to mention a stellar cluster, which is the usual way for dating stars - this age seems to be based on assumptions about stellar evolution, which may or may not be entirely accurate, and also relies on our mass calculations to be correct.

I always am a bit skeptical of extreme astronomical distances for similar reasons, as we have to make a lot of assumptions to assume that they are accurate.

Incidentally, this star is not dated the same way that we dated the Universe; the Universe's age was dated using cosmic background radiation rather than stellar age, which has the advantage of not relying on our knowledge of stellar evolution.

As for what would happen if we DID narrow down the error bars to the point where the oldest star was older than the universe... we'd know that either our method for dating the universe is bad, or our method for dating the star was bad. Most likely we'd examine the star first, as one odd bit of data is more likely to be incorrect than a lot of data (as there is more than JUST background radiation involved in dating the universe).